Comment by kube-system
4 months ago
In the old days people didn’t check them and they’d run around on underinflated tires on the highway until they had a front end blowout and took out a family minivan in the neighboring lane.
That’s why it’s a FMVSS requirement now.
There are secure TPMS implementations, e.g. ABS sensor based systems.
>In the old days people didn’t check them and they’d run around on underinflated tires on the highway until they had a front end blowout and took out a family minivan in the neighboring lane.
This is revisionist history through the lens of screeching people on Reddit.
Back in the old days you didn't need to "check your tires" because it's flagrantly obvious visually and in terms of handling when a tire with a 65 or 75 aspect ratio is low.
The reason we have a bunch more requirements on tires is because of all the finger pointing that ensued as a result of the Firestone Explorer debacle suddenly made formerly irrelevant few-psi differences in pressure very important. TPMS is there because you can't get a good visual read on lower profile tires until they're quit low. If you're not oblivious it won't matter you'll feel the vehicle handling funny long before they actually get low enough to cause problems though.
What "solved" blowouts was changes in construction. They started putting a couple extra belts into passenger car tires in the mid 00s. It mostly has to do with cap improvements that help prevent the sidewall from opening up at the shoulder.
Back in "the day" (so like 80s on down) everyone ran their tires to failure (usually bald, but often blowout as well) as a matter of normal practice, bought used tires left and right and blowouts were pretty common, even more common back in the really old days of tubes. It didn't reliably cause an accident unless you behaved hysterically in response, hence why everyone felt fine doing it. But that was so long ago ago, nobody much remembers it, nobody wrote about it on the internet and therefore it doesn't exist for the purposes of online discussion.
100% this. I'm happy someone else remembers too. It's really odd how in the past decade or two of mass internet adoption the world changed and it feels "dumber" in terms of all these lost experiences.
Time for me to stop internetting, enternal summer, etc.
While you or I, or anyone else who's arguing about tire inflation on the Internet, might be the type of person who can tell just by looking at a 65 series tire whether or not it's inflated correctly -- I don't really think that's the reality of the least-common-denominator driver in the 80s or 90s. Given the number of obviously under inflated tires that I did see back in the 90s, I think it's pretty clear that many drivers either were unable to tell, or didn't bother to look.
> Back in "the day" (so like 80s on down) everyone ran their tires to failure (usually bald, but often blowout as well) as a matter of normal practice, bought used tires left and right and blowouts were pretty common, even more common back in the really old days of tubes. It didn't reliably cause an accident unless you behaved hysterically in response, hence why everyone felt fine doing it.
Yeah, tire technology wasn't great then. And yes, there were people that ran bald tires. But there are still people today that don't care about bald tires. Depends on which side of town you're on. The common way people were measuring tire tread in the 80s, if they cared, was with Lincoln's head on a penny. But also people didn't drive as aggressively as they do now, because 80s cars were slow as shit compared to what people are driving today or even in the 2000s.
SUVs are more dangerous than cars when tire pressure is low due a higher center of gravity and more weight (usually).
Probably why the issue came about with the Ford Explorer, a early widespread SUV
Back in the old days you didn't need to "check your tires" because it's flagrantly obvious visually and in terms of handling when a tire with a 65 or 75 aspect ratio is low.
On bias-ply tires from ‘60s, sure. You’re not going to visually check tire pressure on radials, at least not with any accuracy.
Back in "the day" (so like 80s on down) everyone ran their tires to failure (usually bald, but often blowout as well) as a matter of normal practice,
That’s just old man “kids today!” bullshit. I was an auto mechanic in the ‘80s, and the only people that did that were very poor or very stupid.
I don't consider myself oblivious, and it really scared me how little the handling changed with a flat rear tire. It also didn't make any extra noise.
I have always wondered if it is the lack of sidewall on a 225/45R17.
I did notice in time though, somehow. The tire shop also couldn't find a reason for the flat, so they simply remounted it, filled it, and sent me on my way.
> The tire shop also couldn't find a reason for the flat,
I've had a valve core get stuck open in a way that was released by poking at it. And the little plastic cap is amazingly good at holding the tire pressure in too. Sometimes rebooting the computer is the right fix.
My VW Golf has ABS based tire pressure monitoring and for the most part it works. The disadvantage is that it can only tell you if one tire is flat. If they all get slowly flat over time there won't be a significant discrepancy between tires and they will not trigger any warning.
I consider that a worthy tradeoff though, I can just check the pressure once in a while and I get to save money on my winter wheel set.
Did it have something to do with the Ford Explorer?
But anecdotally, we were driving through Chicago in the family Subaru Forester, and got a huge gash in one tire. The Soob has so much automation in its drivetrain, that it still handled OK enough and we didn't notice there was a problem until the TPMS light came on. We had to cross a couple lanes of very heavy, fast traffic, to get off the road.